We will never know Annabelle's story. We only know this: the date they gave her as her birthday -- determined by the age they guessed her to be on September 6, 2004; chosen as an even number because even numbers are lucky -- that birthday, is April 18, the same day that Grace died. Annabelle, like me, was born in the year of the monkey. Monkeys are intelligent and are known to have a great sense of humor. Monkeys and rats are said to be the best of friends.
Annabelle arrived home on April 6, 2005. It was the year of the rooster. In Chinese astrology, there is an improvement of difficult situations during rooster years. They are a time to seek emotional solace. One of the hexagrams of the I Ching that symbolizes the middle third of a rooster year -- the time when Mother's Day falls -- is the image of a small trickle of water flowing from a rock as a container below it slowly begins to fill. It is called, "The humble power of the smallest."
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"They mark them, you know," someone told us before we left for China. "The mothers brand the babies they abandon. It's a sign of love."We had heard stories about babies being found with a yam, a sign of how valuable the baby was. We had heard of a note left that simply said: This is my baby. Take care of her. We had heard of one baby found with a bracelet around her wrist, and another with a river rock to indicate she was from a town near water. But this branding was something new.
The group of ten families with which we traveled to China, all got our babies at the same time, in a nondescript city building in Changsha. Changsha is the capital of Hunan Province, and it is four hours from Loudi and the orphanage. Soon, people were lifting pant legs or the cuffs of sleeves to show the small scars on their babies. "They mark them," one mother said, spreading her new daughter's fingers to reveal a scar in between the index and pointer.
On Annabelle's neck I found a thick rope of scar tissue, round and small. The pediatrician examined it and frowned. "Don't get upset," he said, "but this almost looks like a burn that has healed."
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A month after Grace died, I had my first Mother's Day without my daughter. Sam and Lorne carved a heart out of wood, sanded it smooth as if they could ease the pain in my own heart this way. They threaded the wooden heart on a dark red ribbon, and it still hangs from the rear view mirror of my car. But Lorne also gave me a book he made, with pictures of Grace and descriptions beneath them of what Grace and I did together: cooking, reading, laughing, walking hand in hand. It was the worst Mother's Day I could imagine. Here was Sam, my son, offering me a heart. And here was the empty chair, the silence, my own heart, broken.
Each subsequent Mother's Day brought a new pain -- the passing of time without watching Grace growing up, the burst of spring blossoms in our garden mocking my loss. I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes -- the sparkly ones, the leopard rainboots, the ballet slippers -- stood in a corner. I kept her hairbrush on a shelf in my closet, and the fine strands of her pale blonde hair were still tangled in it. As I walked out the door, I still sometimes paused to bury my nose in her powder blue jacket, as if I might find something of her there.
Three Mother's Days later, I am sitting in my kitchen singing to Annabelle. It is raining, and I am singing an old Lovin' Spoonful song. We can sit and dry just as long as it can pour, cause the way it makes you look makes me hope it rains some more… I am singing to Annabelle, and she is grinning at me, a big toothless grin. When Annabelle laughs, my heart soars. When she presses her hand into mine, or rests her head against my chest, or falls asleep in my arms, I feel myself slowly, slowly coming back to life.
Sometimes I touch that small round scar on her neck and I wonder about the woman who might have put it there. I wonder if she walked down those dusty roads I saw in China, past the endless fields of kale, cradling her daughter in her arms. I wonder if she cried when she placed her in that small box. I wonder what words she might have whispered to her.
On Mother's Day now, each year, I think about Grace. And I think about this woman I will never know. I, of course, thank her, and I praise her strength in doing this seemingly impossible thing: giving her daughter to me. She will never know that I have her daughter because I lost Grace. She will never know the road I traveled to get her.
Annabelle lifts her arms to me, and I pick her up.
"Mama," she whispers.
"Daughter," I whisper back.
About the writer
Ann Hood is the author of the upcoming memoir, "Comfort: A Journey Through Grief," from which this story is excerpted. She has also written several novels.
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